US-based and India-born conversational messaging platform Gupshup on Thursday announced the acquisition of Dotgo, a New Jersey-based rich communications services (RCS) startup.
The companies did not disclose financial details of the deal. Dotgo will strengthen Gupshup’s conversational messaging platform which helps businesses and developers build customer experiences.
Gupshup also plans to leverage Dotgo’s experience and presence in Africa to expand there. Dotgo said it is uniquely positioned to help brands integrate the RCS channel using simple APIs (application programming interfaces) into their customer communications, whether for sales, support, services, or other business processes.
Its partners include Google, Mavenir, Synchronoss, Vodafone, WhatsApp, Jio, and Orange.
“We started Dotgo to create APIs that make it easy for brands and other players in the ecosystem to adopt RCS while taking care of and hiding all the backend complexity from our customers. With the addition of RCS, Gupshup will undoubtedly be the strongest IP messaging company, and thus help us accelerate our mission,” Inderpal Singh Mumick, co-founder and CEO of Dotgo, said.
The acquisition comes at a time when Gupshup is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the US next July.
In July this year it secured $240 million in its Series F round of funding.
With the capital, the company was on the lookout for M&A opportunities to expand its business.
Founded in 2004 as Webaroo Inc by Beerud Sheth and Rakesh Mathur, Gupshup started out as an offline search engine. It later pivoted to an SMS-based B2C social network which did not bring in much revenue.
The company then moved to a B2B model to provide customer engagement across SMS and other channels. Gupshup has now gone on to include hyperlinks to SMS and added OTT (over the top) messaging channels, such as WhatsApp for Business, RCS, and the Gupshup IP messaging channel, to its platform.
The firm offers services such as messaging APIs, bot platforms, bot building tools, scripting engine, omni-channel inbox, conversational AI (artificial intelligence), and client-side software. Its carrier-grade platform provides messaging APIs across more than 30 channels.
The company, which works with business in India, the UK, and the US, claims to have clocked an annual revenue run rate of $150 million in 2020.
